U.S. Commerce Secretary John Bryson Highlights Manufacturing and Exports in Florida

This
week, U.S. Commerce Secretary and former CEO John Bryson traveled to Florida to
meet with local business leaders and discuss his priorities for supporting
advanced manufacturing and encouraging exports. On Thursday evening, Bryson
delivered remarks
to the National Association of Manufacturers Board of Directors dinner in Boca
Raton, Fla. Friday morning, he visited the Port of Miami and took a tour of
Pavilion Furniture, a Miami Gardens, Fla. company that is working with
the Department of Commerce’s Commercial Service to expand the exports of its
products. Following the tour, Bryson delivered remarks
and joined Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos A. Gimenez and local business leaders
for a discussion about how the private and public sector can work together to
expand exports and create jobs.

Business
leaders participating in the discussion included Mike Buzzella, President and
CEO of Pavilion Furniture, Raj Rangaswamy, President of Target Engineering, and
Luis Arguello, CEO of DemeTech. Target Engineering, an engineering
services firm, will be joining Secretary Bryson on a Commerce-led trade mission
to India at the end of the month. DemeTech Corporation, a producer of surgical
sutures and blades, previously joined a Commerce Department trade mission to
Saudi Arabia.

The
U.S. has recently experienced dramatic job growth in the U.S. manufacturing
sector. In the past two years U.S. manufacturing created over 400,000 jobs –
over 80,000 in the first two months of this year alone. Bryson highlighted some
of the Administration’s initiatives to support advanced manufacturing,
including the National
Network for Manufacturing Innovation. The Network, which President
Obama proposed last week, would be a $1 billion
investment in up to 15 institutes of advanced manufacturing research and
experience across the country, designed to help make U.S. manufacturers more
innovative and competitive.

Bryson
also shared news on Commerce’s efforts to boost exports. This week marks the
two-year anniversary of the signing of the Executive Order creating the
National Export Initiative, when President Obama set the goal of doubling U.S.
exports by the end of 2014. Earlier this week, the Commerce Department
released new data showing that jobs
supported by U.S. exports increased by 1.2 million between 2009 and 2011.
In 2011, exports supported approximately 9.7 million jobs, and the value of
U.S. exports of goods and services exceeded $2.1 trillion for the first time in
U.S. history.

In
addition, Bryson discussed the U.S.-Korea Trade Agreement (KORUS), which went
into effect yesterday. Korea is the world’s 12th largest economy,
and under the new agreement, about 80 percent of Korea’s tariffs on U.S.
industrial products are now dropping to zero.KORUS is America’s most
significant trade agreement in nearly two decades, and is estimated to increase
U.S. exports by approximately $11 billion, support tens of thousands of
American jobs, and open up Korea’s $1 trillion economy for America’s workers
and businesses.

At
both stops, Secretary Bryson stressed that The Commerce Department is dedicated
to providing business across the country the resources they need to build
products here and sell them everywhere.